Wickes

About Wickes

The Wickes name goes as far back as 1854, when Henry Dunn Wickes and his brother started a modest operation in the local lumber business in Michigan, USA. However, Wickes as we recognise it today really started in the 1950s American property boom, with the creation of a one-stop-shop selling builders a full range of construction products at prices often lower than local yards and merchants.

In 1972 the first UK Wickes was opened in Whitefield, Manchester. It was an imaginative new concept - using a traditional DIY store model to sell to the trade - and it made Wickes the first fixed-price builder’s merchant in the UK. Its first customers (savvy tradesmen and a few keen DIYers) found they could now get all the products they needed to complete entire projects from a single store, at lower prices than other merchants.